Month: April 2006
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Democratic gas price demagoguery
Democrats are the only hope for instituting a substantial gas tax hike and offsetting income tax cut, a combination that former Bush economist Greg Mankiw said “may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.” But, sadly, they are giving into election-year pressures to demagogue the gas price issue, and
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Bush’s answer to everything: More PR
President Bush’s decision to bring in Tony Snow as the White House spokesperson is being hailed by some as a rare admission of error. But it’s not. Instead, it’s indicative of the President’s leadership style, which treats failures of substance as failures of public relations. Every time things have gone wrong in this administration —
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Malcolm Gladwell on Duke lacrosse IDs
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, makes a good point about the identifications by the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case: [T]he Duke case is an example of another, even more problematic aspect of eyewitness identifications, and that is that we aren’t particular good at making them across races. There is
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Ramesh Ponnuru’s The Party of Death
Ramesh Ponnuru is a nice guy, but I have to agree with Andrew Sullivan about Ponnuru’s new book The Party of Death: I haven’t yet read Ramesh Ponnuru’s book, “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.” Ponnuru is a highly intelligent and reasonable writer, although his
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“Naughty” Naseef’s campaign for judge
Here in Durham, someone named Robert “Naughty” Nauseef is running a bizarre campaign for a seat on the district court. I don’t know about you, but I’m not usually inclined to vote for judges named “Naughty”…
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Ken Mehlman hypes the Democratic boogeyman
In an email to supporters yesterday (PDF), GOP chairman Ken Mehlman returns to his party’s tactic of motivating the base by promoting fears of Democratic impeachment. Here’s the key question from the “Republican Grassroots Voices Survey”: 3.) If the Democrats win control of the Congress in 2006, what is the one thing you would be
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Joel Kaplan forgets the “Brooks Brothers” riot
Amnesia can apparently strike at any time: Though the Senate unanimously confirmed Mr. Kaplan, Mr. Lautenberg also grilled him about reports that he was on hand for the so-called Brooks Brothers protest in November 2000, when a large group of Bush supporters — many in business attire — stormed a room in Florida where supervisors
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RNC flack: GOP doesn’t question Dem. patriotism
I have to call bullshit on this: Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said her party has “never questioned Democrats’ patriotism,” but she added: “We do question John Kerry’s motives, considering his eagerness to engage in political theatrics as he ponders a presidential run.” As I’ve noted before, there is a long
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NYT smacks down Viswanathan’s plagiarism
Newspapers are often soft on plagiarists. Rather than explaining how unlikely it is that an author could have accidentally copied multiple word-for-word passages from another person’s book, the reporter will frequently just quote the plagiarist expressing dismay at how such a thing could have happened. So it was good to see the New York Times
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Duke lacrosse: Victim investigation begins
According to the Smoking Gun website, Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann’s lawyer has filed a motion requesting medical, criminal and mental health records of his accuser: The lawyer for one of the Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping an exotic dancer wants prosecutors to provide him with the alleged victim’s medical records since “the